Badlands Trip

Badlands Trip

A day of fun........and carnage

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Badlands 5/29/2004 Well, we finally made a trek to the hollowed ground of the Badlands off road park, located in Attica, Indiana. In a nutshell, it's worth the trip. Whatever you're into, they have at least 100 acres of it. We started our day from the parking lot and immediately hit a couple of long, extremely steep hills. The v8 toy, took the lead and nailed the gas up the hill. At the top of the hill, it dropped right away into a rutted decent with 2 trees staring him in the face. The Jeep was next to follow and started to teeter. I went up with the blue toy and crept through the obstacle with advanced warning. That initial hill was a rude introduction to the Badlands. Steep hills with even steeper descents on the other side. The surface texture varies from sand to loose rock over most of the area. From there we descended into the Quarry. If rock crawling is your thing, this is the place to do it. We watched rock buggies and a few Cherokees climb near vertical rock faces there. Here is where the fuel pump crapped out on the black toy. After the toy was dragged off, we headed into the woods. Once into the woods, be prepared for tight turns and plenty of scrapes. Mud holes are all over the place and can be very deep. I dropped the blue toy into one that was dug out with a backhoe. I quickly hung up on the frame and we had to pull it through. The hole was around 4 feet deep and was a sheer drop on the one end. We ended up following a trail and descending into a deep creek, then crawling up a hill into a place known as the bowl. It's a large sandbox for quads and bikes. At the top of the bowl there is a plateau that provided a few great mud holes, which we took full advantage of. From there, we headed back to the parking lot and more trails. This is where things got tricky. The pink trails are carved from the sides of hills and are tricky to navigate. On one hill, the blue toy hooked a rock on the bank while we were descending. Ryan was in charge of the rig and I was riding shotgun. It started to teeter and rock. The wheel was absolutely locked to the right and gravity took over. We went on our lid and ended up hanging upside down. We were lucky that the truck didn't cartwheel down the rest of the hill. We crawled out and had to drag the toy down the hill on its roof. Then we rigged up a rope from the frame and put her back on her feet. We dragged it out and had to come back to get it an hour later. At that time I hopped in and started it up. What a testament to Toyota's toughness. Beat the hell out of it all day, roll it over, drag it down a hill, and it still starts and drives. Thank God for trailers and seatbelts. And the fact that it only went over once. A roll bar or cage will be on it in the future. The cab was salvaged and a new windshield put in. A new hood had to go on and now it looks a little ridiculous. Shinny paint, bashed in fenders. Oh well, it's no trailer queen. The badlands is defiantly a return trip place for us. We had a ball despite the carnage of equipment. Next time maybe we'll come out with a better batting average.